Priest of the Archdiocese of Washington

At the Beginning of Creation, It Was Not Like This

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

In His encounter with the Pharisees, Jesus teaches on the very nature of marriage, as the corporeal sign which points to the very mystery of God. A communion of persons, whose reciprocal gift is built into the complementarity of male and female, all the way in the first chapter of Genesis. This self gift, or self donation, in the Sacrament of Marriage, has by nature a complementary signature. Only in the context of this complementary love of male and female, between husband and wife, does humanity share in the life giving creative power of God, who is the source of all life.

“From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.”